a blog about life on Skopelos

The apocalypse that wasn’t

Anyone on Skopelos over the past week with stuff to do outdoors and a weather eye on, well, the weather eyes on the internet might, as we did, have had the wellies, brolly and sou’wester ready for this weekend. Early in the week, at least three weather websites were predicting violent storms and major downpours this weekend, although as forecasts beyond a few days are unreliable, we waited until mid-week to start eyeing the sites and then the skies.

The over-excitable Weather Underground threatened thunderstorms from Thursday night to Monday morning. The not terribly reliable Weather Forecast.com had similarly apocalyptic visions for the weekend. Even the normally on-the-ball Windfinder.com foresaw major downpours and the odd flash of lightning. The alarms were downgraded over the days, but at midday Sunday we had yet to see a drop of rain. Only the sober Athens Uni Atmospheric Modeling and Weather Forecasting Group accurately predicted moderate cloud cover and the possibility of light rain today. We assume the commercial sites take data feeds from government weather stations, but we can’t remember a time when their predictions were so spectacularly wrong. Or perhaps their algorithms have it in for Skopelos?

Share this:

Like this:

Related

7 Responses

Not that I know much about weather forecasting but I like to speculate. Might it be that forecasting in the winter is easier (more accurate) as the differentiation between high and low pressure is greater? (Is it?) Therefore weather is easier to track and predict. (Strong low pressure vs weak low pressure)???

Characteristics in the summer might be more difficult to track except when conditions are ripe for thunderstorms. But then predictions can only be hours ahead for such rarities.

I would like to know of a site where the predictions are updated hourly rather than every 12 to 24 hours. With computers analyzing real time data forecasts must change in real time. Probably the military has it down. Or should. Feel like sharing?

I don’t think there’s a winter/summer variation; weather is just weather, and the hardware should be able to read it. Some of these sites, like Weather Underground, have auto updates; clicking on the link above, the latest was a minute ago. But I’m not sure what is being updated: their interpretation of data (WU daily predictions are often five or more degrees C above what they’re actually recording in real time) or what the weather stations are telling them. I suspect a disconnect between the raw data and the systems used to interpret them. Although perhaps the real disconnect is between the Athens Uni system run by scientists, and the commercial sites run by pop meteorologists?

I will admit, though, that there was the teensiest spritz of raindrops over Limnonari Taverna late this afternoon…

What I meant was that something like a hurricane, from which lives are endangered, being very strong low pressure systems, can be predicted to behave certain ways. Strong winter storms, such as those which form in the Eastern Atlantic might be easier to predict over a longer period of time as they blow weaker systems out of their way as they move eastward. Storms which form over the Mediterranean might not have the same oomph. Hard data vs soft data?

This from a guy who just wants to know when to take the wash in from the line.